


When insects are religious

by giallarhorn



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 08:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1504058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giallarhorn/pseuds/giallarhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’m the Doctor, and I can go anywhere in time I want. Guards and high walls and untamed equines couldn’t keep me out of a place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When insects are religious

**Author's Note:**

> Set between Cold Earth and Vincent and the Doctor, when they take a visit to the Trojan Gardens.

Amy picks through the clothes in the wardrobe, and wonders for what isn’t the last time how the TARDIS manages to have clothes. “Doctor?”

There isn’t an answer.

“Typical,” she pulls the sweater over her head; next the hat goes on. “Always running off. Where do you want to go this time, he says. Some place nice? Okay, we’ll go here!” she snorts and makes her way down to the console room. “And then he goes, running off!”

“What are you on about?” He peers at her from the other side of the column, fiddling with one of the many knobs. “I don’t run.”

“Oh, really?” she takes a moment to maneuver her way down to the main deck. Too many stairs in places they shouldn’t be- she couldn’t tell if it was because the TARDIS was built that way or because he liked stairs.

“Yes, really.” He leans forward and scrutinizes her. “I’m the Doctor. The Doctor does not run. It’s not dignified.”

“Well, I’m sorry Mr. Dignity, I just remember seeing you run back to the TARDIS ahead of me when we were stealing that home box.” She smiles and saunters to the array of switches and buttons and wheels. “Oh, wait- too dignified to answer?”

He ignores her and instead looks at the monitor screen. “Perfectly sunny with a few clouds.” Then he adds, “That was walking fast. Now, we are going!”

“Uh hu. Where are we going?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I just told you.”

Amy thinks back to the last few moments after they had left Arcadia. “No, you didn’t. You asked where I wanted to go next, and then you took off.”

“You’re lying.” He _twirls_ \- not turn, but twirl- around, straightening his bowtie and heads towards the door. “Come along, Pond. You’ll want to see this.”

She sighs and follows him; she knows by now there isn’t quite any better choice. It might take time for her to get an answer out of him, but he’d give an answer.

Eventually. Sooner or later.

“So, where are we?” she calls out through the open door. There’s birdsong and sunlight, and something pleasant smelling on the wind.

“Come and see!”

She sighs. “Coming, Doctor.” Pulling her jacket on, she steps outside.

And she gasps and just sort of gawks with her mouth open. It’s the best thing she can think to do beyond stare, but she’s already doing that.

Because he’s right, it is a sight. It’s breathtaking- no, that won’t even come close to it. Breathtaking can’t describe the burnt gold sky rippling with orange waves and curtains of light playing across it in eddies and streams, or the crystal globes that are suspended in the air or the glow from the plants.

He turns to look at her with a smile on his face. “Welcome, Amy Pond, to the Trojan Gardens, located at the center of the Aschen cluster, the heart of the early Cytaskti religious movement.”

Amy didn’t get a word of what he just said and she doesn’t really care. “It’s beautiful.”

“Geomagnetic currents charge the atmosphere to create that curtain and the globes,” he waves a hand at the sky. “They’re there as stabilizers to make sure a freak earthquake or static hurricane won’t pop up and sweep away the whole thing.” He accents his words with a motion of his hands, and skips ahead down the steps. “It’s also private property, strictly forbidden to all outsiders.”

Amy knows what he’s going to say next, but she gives him the cue anyway. “But?”

“But that doesn’t include me. I’m the Doctor, and I can go anywhere in time I want. Guards and high walls and untamed equines couldn’t keep me out of a place.”

Something seems out of place in that statement. “Untamed equines?”

“I think that’s the saying. ”He bends down to examine a statue carved of crystal, all gleaming curves and smooth edges.

“It’s wild horses Doctor, not untamed equines.”

“Equines, horses, hounds, mammals. Does it matter? It’s a metaphor.”

“Of course it matters.” She looks up at the sky to see a ripple of liquid light spread across the horizon, the waves catching and altering colors as they speed across. “Why does it do that?” When he gives her a sort of questioning look, she points to the waves. “That. Does light act like that here?”

“Oh, that. Echoes.” He pauses for moment, staring upward. “Did you know, Amy Pond, that if you see a star in the sky explode, you’re really seeing the echo of its death? That the star itself has been gone and is then, in that moment you see it, nothing more than a ball of dust and gas.”

“It’s cause light can’t travel that fast, right?” She gives him a sidelong glance. He doesn’t look like he’s insulting her. “Just cause I was a kissogram doesn’t mean I didn’t listen in class.”

“Well, it’s that principle but here they’re magnified. Echoes across time. The light waves have been slowed down to a trillionth of a second, caught and stretched out across the sky,” he nods upward. “Giving you this. If you ever get to be nine hundred and seven, things start to look like that. Echoes.”

She doesn’t really understand where he’s going with all of this. “I don’t feel like an echo.”

“You’re not. Mad, impossible Amy Pond.”

“Doctor.” She frowns when she notices something black and shiny moving up the side of one of the trees. “Ugh, what’s that?”

“What?”

“That.” She points at the black thing.

He glances to where she’s pointing. “Oh, that’s just a beetle.”

She raises an eyebrow. Beetles aren’t supposed to be the size of her hand or have that many legs. “Why’re there still beetles on other planets? And why, Doctor, is it so big?”

“It’s just a bug. And I’ve seen giant ones before, the size of your chest.”

“So what is it doing here?”

 “Part of the religion.” He shrugs.

She isn’t sure if he’s joking or not, because he seems serious. “Religion.”

“Someone who liked to collect life forms had a ship. The ship blew up, and I guess a beetle landed from the wreckage here.” The way he says the words makes her feel like he blew the ship up. He had mentioned once how he’d blown up some factory so he could grow bananas. “It’s not that strange- there’s a planet where they worship time.”

“Religion.”

“It’s just a bug, Pond. Think of it as an allegory.” He begins to walk down the path. “An allegory for a giant ship blowing up in their sky.”

“Doctor?” Amy calls after him.

“What?”

“There’s an bug on your back.”

“What?” He spasms and whips out his screwdriver, twirling and flailing around in an attempt to reach the imaginary bug. “Where? Is it gone?” Then he realizes, because she’s laughing and doubled over with her vision a little blurry.

“Gotcha!”

He straightens and pulls himself to himself to his full height. “You think you’re funny, don’t you, Pond. Well I’ll tell you what.”

 

“That I am funny?” Amy grins. She’s won this one.

“No. You have an allegory crawling on your shoulder.


End file.
